If I’m frank, I didn’t want to write a blog today. Not at all. I wanted to let it slide. Forget about it.

I told myself, “Hey, who’s going to read it anyway?”

I gave myself other excuses too. Such as, “You’ve got a sick daughter hanging out with you today. Everyone will understand if you don't post anything.”

Those are the kinds of thoughts I entertained before I said, “To hell with it. Write the blog anyway.”

So here it is.

I like to talk. A lot.

Yeah, I’m a yapper.

And one of the subjects I like to talk about is genealogy.

On Saturday night a friend of mine said, “You know, my wife always tells me to come look at some document she’s found. I don’t get it.”

He was all the way across the room, sitting on the couch next to his son. Between us was a coffee table, a plant, and a television with the college football game playing. Even with all the distractions, I saw an in for some good conversation.

“You don’t like genealogy?” I asked.

His son, who was sitting next to him, shook his head and mouthed the words, “Not at all.”

“I guess not,” my friend said. “Maybe if I found out some stories about my ancestors I would find it interesting, but I don’t care about random war documents that tells me nothing about them. Or other things like that.”

“Well,” I responded, “what if the war document told you what regiment or squadron or battalion your ancestor served in? Then you could go and look up what your ancestor did in the war. You could learn where they fought, how they served, and what happened to them. The regiment’s story is your ancestor’s story. What then? That’s one of the things I do if I haven’t learned enough. I think that’s pretty cool.”

By then the football game we were watching came back from the commercial break and we sat there in the blue light, far across the room from each other, and no closer to me converting him to the glories of genealogy.

But at least he brought up the subject in the first place. For me that signals he’s willing to be persuaded.

At least I didn’t kill the subject by reciting to him a long list of the names in my family tree. Then I would have bored everyone. Even the other genealogists in the room.

And that's a win. 

All football scores aside.